Documentation of oral history of Arab women, research in gender sensitive approaches to oral narratives, gender and Arab cultural history (nineteenth and twentieth century), Arab women writers and comparative cultural studies.

-"Towards a Department of English and Comparative Literature," in CDELT, 1990.
- "Changing concepts of Time: Egypt as Metaphor in Lawrence Durrell, Penelope Lively and E.M. Forster," in Proceedings of the Cairo Symposium on Comparative Literature, 1991.
- "Rereading Shakespeare's Sonnet 29," in Cairo Studies, Cairo, Cairo University Press 1992.
- "Cultural Encounters and Feminist Revisionism in H.D.'s Helen in Egypt," Proceedings of the Cairo Symposium on Comparative Literature, 1992.
- "Parodic Stylization as a Safeguard of Human Rights: Cultural Politics in Afro-Caribbean Writing," in Alif. Special issue on Human Rights, May 1993.
- "Woman: The Territory of Taboo: A Reading of the Works of Qasem Amin," (in Arabic) Hagar, Dar Sina, 1993.
- "Crossing the Boundaries of Self in Grace Nichols' I is a long memoried woman," Bulletin of the Faculty of Arts, Cairo University, 1994.
- "Malak Hifni Nassef: A Missing Voice in the History of the Egyptian Enlightenment," (in Arabic) Hagar, 1994.
- "Reconsidering the History of Feminism and Anti-Colonialism in Egypt: A Reading of Mounira Thabet's Memoirs." Proceedings of the International Cairo Symposium on Comparative Literature, 1994.
-“From Arabic Into English: The Politics of Translation in a Post-Colonial Context,” Comparative Literature Studies, ed. Ahmed Itman, Cairo, 1998.
-“Women in Egypt: Education and Modernity,” in The Self and the Other: Sustainability and Self-Empowerment, ed. Ismail Serageldin and Afaf Mahfouz, ESD series No. 13, Washington, The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development/ The World Bank, 1996.
-“Theories of Autobiography and Arab Women’s Writings,” (in Arabic) Arab Women Confronting The Challenges of the Age, Cairo, Nour, 1996.
-“On Modifying the Marriage Contract” (co-written with Mona Zulficar) (in Arabic) Hagar, Dar Nusus, 1996.
-“Women’s Writing in Egypt: Reflections on Salwa Bakr,” in Gendering the Middle East, ed. Deniz Kandiyoti, London, Taurus, 1996.
-“A Gender-Sensitive Reading of Latifa El-Zayat’s Sahib Al-Bayt,” in Cairo Studies, Cairo, Cairo University Press,1996.
-“Stereotypes of Women in the Media: How they affect women’s consciousness,” (in Arabic) Hagar, Dar Nusus, 1997.
-“Women’s Biographies and Cultural Identity: A Reading of Aisha Bint Abi Bakr,” (in Arabic) in Women’s Time and Alternate Memory, Cairo, The Women and Memory Forum, 1998.
-“The Politics of Memory: Challenges Facing Women Researchers in the Middle East.” Delivered as part of the keynote panel of the meeting of the Association of the Middle East Women’s Studies (AMEWS) in Chicago, November 1998.
-“Notions of Modernity: Representations of the “Western Woman” by Female Authors in Early Twentieth-Century Egypt,” in The Arabs and Britain: Changes and Exchanges. Proceedings of a conference organized by the British Council in Cairo, 1998.
-“Hoda Elsadda: Women and Memory “An Interview,” (in Arabic) in Gender and Knowledge: Contribution of Gender Perspectives to Intellectual Formations, a special issue of Alif, No.19, 1999.
-“Against Meta-narratives: Constructing/ Disrupting Representations of the “Female Self” in the Oral Narratives of Egyptian Women” in a seminar organized by the European Science Foundation as part of a research program on “The Individual and Society in the Mediterranean Muslim World,” in Cairo at The Supreme Council of Culture, March 2000.
-“Discourses on Women’s Biographies and Cultural Identity: Twentieth Century Representations of the Life of Aisha Bint Abi Bakr,” in Feminist Studies, 27:1 (Spring, 2001), pp.37-64.
-"Male Perceptions of the “Self”: Representations of Women through the Eyes of Egyptian Pioneers of Enlightenment" (in Arabic) in Proceedings of a Conference entitled "A Hundred Years Since the Liberation of Women," Cairo, The Supreme Council of Culture, 2000.
-“‘Motherhood’ as Experience in the Poetry of Lorna Goodison,” in Cairo Studies in English, Cairo, Cairo University Press, 2000.
-“Ambivalent Beginnings: The Identity Crisis in Departments of English in Egyptian Universities,” (in Arabic) in Bahithat: Special Issue on Arab Universities. Beirut, 2001.
-"Creative Writing by Egyptian Women," (in Arabic) in The Memory of the Future: An Encyclopedia of Arab Women's Writings, Cairo, Nour and The Supreme Council of Culture, 2002.
-“The Meaning of a Prayer: Challenges to Cross-Cultural Understanding in a Global Age,” Keynote Address in the Conference on Culture and Power: Phobias, Tarragona University, Spain, October, 2002; published in Culture and Power: Phobias, edited Cristine Andreu and Pere Gallardo, Silva editorial, Tarragona, 2004.
- “Constructing Representations of the Self: A Literary Reading of the Oral Narrative of Kawkab Hifni Nasef,” (in Arabic) in Arab Women in The Twenties: Presence and Identity, Al-Bahihat, Al- Markaz Al-Thaqafi Al-Arabi, Beirut, 2003.
- ‘Disciplinary Entry on Oral History,” in Encyclopedia of Women in Islamic Cultures, Vol I, Brill, 2003.
-“’The Woman Question’ in Egyptian National Discourses: A Reading of Abdallah Al-Nadim’s Magazine ‘Al-Ustaz’”, (in Arabic) in Aisha Taymur: Chllenges of Change and Continuity in the Nineteenth Century, Cairo, The Women and Memory Forum, forthcoming 2004.
-“Gender, Democracy and Censorship: The Limits of Academic Freedom at Cairo University,” in Is Anyone Listening? Independent Voices on Human Rights in the Arab World. Ed. Anthony Tirado Chase and Maryam Elahi. University of California Press, forthcoming 2004.